I think it’s the new normal

it’s really not though. You can tell because, while I’d be willing to bet that almost everyone in this thread has a bank account, none of us think of it as normal.

Wanna know which game I last broke my “no pre-orders” rule for?

No Man’s Sky. The game that was a tech demo for the first year or so after release. It’s become a hell of a game since then, but it taught me a valuable lesson and I haven’t bought a game since then.

It’s kinda the natural progression of late stage hypercapitalism though. Used to be that you spent all your money up front, then your sales recouped your investment and hopefully generated you a profit. Once game companies figured out OTA patches they realized that they can push a lot of QA back until after release and use pre-orders and day 1 sales to fund it. Then with DLC they realized that they can sell the untested skeleton of a game up front and use presales and early sales to fund development. The natural progression seems to be the Star Citizen model, where you get huge chunks of your sales up front and use that to determine what you’ll develop and when (if ever) you’ll release it

Sounds like assault with a deadly weapon

If charged as a felony, you could be facing a sentence of two to four years in State prison. Regular assault (Penal Code § 240), is always charged as a misdemeanor offense.

The instrument used includes any type of firearm, knife, bat, car, or anything other type of weapon that could produce significant harm to the victim.

In order to prove a charge of assault with a deadly weapon, the prosecutor has to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that you assaulted another person and you used a deadly weapon or force that would likely result in great bodily injury.

An assault charge does not require that you actually make physical contact with or injure the person.

https://www.cronisraelsandstark.com/assault-with-deadly-weapon-penal-code-245-a-1#:~:text=Assault with a Deadly Weapon - Penal Code 245(a)(,four%20years%20in%20State%20prison.

If this was in California he is absolutely guilty of assault with a deadly weapon based on what he has admitted to personally.

They told him to get fucked, so one of his chode toadies on xitter started a rumor that they added him to the game and then removed him in a patch.

It’s just a wet mouth on a long arm that reaches down to hell

I haven’t read penny arcade in years, but it brings me joy to see that the writing, at least, seems to be right where I left it. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve a deep crow that needs feeding.

that’s an intellectually dishonest way of quoting the person that you quote

is it impossible to have a balanced conversation about starfield in particular, or does the internet ad economy tend to exclude the middle of every conversation in favor of loud antagonism and engagement bait?

Absolutely delicious, thank you for asking. I’ve been very fortunate and had a lot of help.

Left two jobs in the last 3 years because they offered remote and then tried to claw it back. If I ever set foot in an office again it’ll be too soon.

I also tend to check in with myself on Sunday nights as I’m lying in bed. If I feel like I’m walking into a good situation the next morning, with good problems to solve and a decent chance of actually solving them, then I stick around. If I’m filled with dread awaiting the next off-hours disaster, I brush up my resume and flip the flag on LinkedIn.

No, absolutely not. The difference there is that their choices hurt someone else, driving drunk isn’t inherent to alcoholism, and alcohol isn’t regulated like other drugs so it doesn’t have the same issues with getting help when you need it, dirty supply lines and market pressure to make it as strong as possible.

Yes I absolutely am, because it won’t help kids any at all. This model we follow where we wait until someone dies and then swoop in, designate someone else to be responsible and then hurt that person as much as possible just doesn’t work. In fifty years it has not helped one addict get clean, it hasn’t prevented one person becoming an addict, and it hadn’t stopped one overdose death. We’ve doubled down so hard on this that there are people doing life for simple possession of marijuana. If this was a good idea that worked it would have had some measurable impact by now, but the numbers say that things are getting exponentially worse. I’ve buried 5 close friends and family members due to addiction. I’m sick of doing the same stupid thing over and over again and then when it inevitably doesn’t work just doubling down again.

What’s neat about this is it’s not going to help any children, they know it won’t help any children, and they don’t want it to. It’s an excuse to put more people in prison for longer because a Fucking Lot of people make money every time someone goes to prison. It’s an excuse to boost police budgets that are already inflated, and to erode our civil liberties even further than they already have. We joke that we’re losing the drug war and we regular citizens are, but not to drugs. The drug war is a proxy war that the moneyed establishment is waging against the working class. That’s who’s winning the drug war that we’re losing, and losing so many of our loved ones to.

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they don’t like to say “terrorist”

Do we need strictly objective terms though? Everyone understands intuitively what “blanded” means

an understandable progression from the previous two, but I did not like it nearly as much

I had a similar experience in the genre because I was unfortunate enough to find out about Chuck Person’s Eccojams before I had heard of Oneohtrix Point Never.

deafheaven broke my heart. roads to judah and sunbather are two of my favorite albums of all time, but after sunbather they just started slowly losing their edge like a folding knife you got at the mall. The next three albums were okay, and had flashes of the brilliance of sunbather, but I could see that the band was trying to move away from extreme metal and more toward becoming another shoegaze band. I’m all for artists growing and expanding but I just didn’t care for the direction they were headed. Then infinite granite came out. The thing about infinite granite that stings the most is the song Mombasa, wherein they demonstrate that they’re still perfectly capable of the high flying guitar, low-in-the-mix extreme metal vocals and dynamic rhythm section that I fell ass over ankles for, and that they’re just choosing not to do it for the rest of the album. I even got to see them on a recent tour with Coheed and Cambria (who, it must be said, remain gods astride the earth). I was super hype because the last couple times I had seen deafheaven had been beautiful, intense, Battaile-esque ordeals that shook me to my core. Unfortunately at this show we were about halfway through their third chill, downtempo jazz exploration when I realized that I kinda just don’t care about them anymore. I’m glad they’re doing what they want to do and if this music is the product of George getting sober and growing up, then that’s a fair trade for him and the best of what could possibly happen. But when I saw them on the Sunbather tour I literally rent my clothes with intensity and felt like I was happily under water for like 3 days afterward. I miss it.

they could have asked for NG support before the event

The mayor of DC did, and was denied.

I didn’t realize Michael Flynn’s brother was responsible for sending in the troops

Look up when he was appointed. Trump put him in place during the lame duck period after the election specifically so that he could sabotage security ahead. No one “screwed up” security, they all did exactly what they were there to do. Capitol cops put up a token resistance then waved rioters in, NG was held away from the event until it was well too late, the only people who screwed up were the gangs of terrorists embedded in the crowd who failed to capture any government officials who could potentially have been ransomed in exchange for Trump being appointed. I’m usually a big fan of Hanlon’s razor but in this particular situation that would require a lot of competent people to become very stupid for exactly one day in a way that just so happens to benefit themselves greatly.